the briers the poor old reaper with his upturned
face, peaceful and quiet, now in death, but bearing the look of an
answered prayer.

THE RECOVERY OF THE HISPANIOLA[352-1]

_By_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The coracle--as I had ample reason to know before I was done with
her--was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both
buoyant and clever in a seaway--but she was the most cross-grained
lop-sided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more
leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver
she was best at.

She turned in every direction but the one I was bound to go; the most
part of the time we were broadside on, and I am very sure I never should
have made the ship at all but for the tide. By good fortune, paddle as I
pleased, the tide was still sweeping me down; and there lay the
_Hispaniola_ right in the fair way, hardly to be missed.

First she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker than
darkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the next
moment, as it seemed (for, the further I went, the brisker grew the
current of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser, and had laid hold.

The hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she
pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the
rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream.
One cut with my sea-gully, and the _Hispaniola_ would go humming down
the tide.

So far so good; but it next occurred to my recollection that a taut
hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten to
one, if I were so foolhardy as to cut the _Hispaniola_ from her anchor,
I and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the water.

This brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not again
particularly favored me, I should have had to abandon my design. But the
light airs which had begun blowing from the southeast and south had
hauled round after nightfall into the southwest. Just while I was
meditating, a puff came, caught the _Hispaniola_, and forced her up into
the current; and, to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my
grasp, and the hand by which I held it dip for a second under water.

With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth,
and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two.
Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be
once m